This project analyzes the most recently published national substance abuse and mental health datasets. This dataset contains millions of different observations on substance use, mental health diagnoses, demographics, and many other social factors. We were able to clean and model the data to identify meaningful patterns. One of the key analyses was to identify groups with shared traits using K-means clustering. This revealed seven clusters, or groups, with shared characteristics. For example, females aged 15-17 often had anxiety and trauma issues; whereas, adult females typically dealt with depression and bipolar disorders accompanied by substance use. Additionally, clusters indicated that males in their 30s frequently exhibited opioid dependence. These findings demonstrate the variation in substance use and mental health diagnoses by age and gender. Our findings illustrate how extensive data analysis and modeling can guide clinical interventions and aid future predictive modeling in mental health and substance use research. This project was supported by funding from F&M’s Hackman Summer Scholars Program.

Project Mentor: Professor Yi-Ching Lee, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Child-Robot Interaction (CRI) has grown rapidly as a result of increased interest in using technology to help parents and educators provide more personalized support for children. The findings aim to inform the ethical design and implementation of socially assistive robots (SARs) that align with parental values and concerns. This study investigates how parents perceive socially assistive robots (SARs) with and without Theory of Mind (ToM) capabilities in educational settings. Participants would watch video clips of robot-child interactions and complete surveys addressing robot usefulness, trust, developmental impact, and safety. In pilot testing, participants struggled to distinguish between the two robot conditions intended to reflect different cognitive processes. Many focused more on the child’s reactions and behavior than on how the robot delivered its support, suggesting that subtle differences in robot reasoning are difficult to perceive through passive observation. We are continuing to improve the video stimuli and study instructions to better support participants in recognizing and evaluating these distinctions. This project was supported from funding by the National Science Foundation.

Project Mentor: Professor Willie Wilson, Department of Computer Science

The history of wildfire regimes and Indigenous land management in the central Appalachians remains poorly understood, despite human occupation of the region since at least the Archaic Period (~9000 BP). This project investigates long-term fire history at Bear Meadows, a rare high-elevation peatland in central Pennsylvania that preserves a continuous ecological record. Sediment cores are being analyzed for macrofossils and charcoal to produce the first charcoal stratigraphy from the site. Charcoal abundance is being quantified at high resolution to identify shifts in fire activity over the Holocene, with preliminary loss-on-ignition data providing an organic stratigraphy for comparison. Although radiocarbon dating has not yet been completed, ongoing analysis aims to identify significant episodes of fire and explore their potential links to climate variability and Indigenous land management. This research will contribute new paleoecological data for the region and provide a foundation for future chronological and comparative studies. This project was supported by funding from F&M’s Summer Scholar Program and the Geological Society of America.

Project Mentor:  Dorothy Merritts, Professor of Earth and Environment

An important aspect of nanoscale syntheses, as is the case with most chemical reactions, is the precision control. In some cases, bottom-up syntheses may suffice, but this is not always true. For instance, no procedure has been developed to allow direct synthesis of rod-shaped metastable wurtzite Cu2–x(S,Se) particles, the material that has the potential for a wide range of applications involving photothermal, thermoelectric, and ion storage/transport properties. With that respect, the focus of this project is to expand the understanding of Se2– anion exchange, a post-synthetic transformation that produces wurtzite Cu2–x(S,Se) nanorods from roxbyite Cu2–xS nanoparticles. Herein, we present a series of experimental and computational investigations aimed at improving our knowledge of mechanisms that govern Se2– anion exchange. The results of our data were analyzed by powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), scanning TEM-EDS, and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). This project was supported by funding from F&M’s Hackman Summer Scholars Program, the National Science Foundation and Annie and Ernest Weibrecht Endowment.

Project Mentor: Professor Kate Plass, Department of Chemistry

Down syndrome (DS) is caused by triplication of human chromosome 21. Individuals with DS have skeletal defects such as short stature, low bone mineral density, and increased risk of osteoporosis. DS mouse model Dp(16)1Yey embryos at 17.5 days gestation (T26) were studied for potential skeletal defects by comparing control euploid embryos (Eup) and embryos with a duplication of mouse chromosome 16 q-arm (Dp+). Biological sex influences on skeletal development in both Eup and Dp+ mice were also examined. To compare skeletal growth, crown-rump (CR) length of samples was measured, and bone staining of hindlimbs was utilized to measure femur and primary ossification center length. Significant differences were observed between male and female specimens in regards to CR length and average femur length; no significant differences were observed in regards to DS genotype. Results suggest no significant difference in embryos and long bone sizes between Dp+ and Eup in T26 embryos.

This project was supported by funding from F&M’s Hackman Summer Scholars Program.

Project Mentor: Professor Clara Moore, Department of Biology

The summer 2025 Lancaster Vice team explored Lancaster’s relationship to Prohibition (1920-1933). Anna and Ainsley worked to situate the city within the broader national conflict over alcohol and personal freedom. Well before the 18th Amendment, Lancaster’s Law and Order Society challenged vice by linking saloons to gambling, prostitution, and corruption. However, Pennsylvania remained a “wet” state until federal Prohibition, and Lancaster actively resisted Prohibition through illegal brewing and distilling, and corruption permeated law enforcement. Prohibition enforcement was selective, as elite clubs were rarely disturbed, while working-class, immigrant, and Black communities bore the brunt of police raids. This research demonstrates how Prohibition functioned less as an alcohol ban and more as a tool to control working-class and immigrant drinking cultures. This project was supported by funding from the F&M Hackman Summer Scholars Program and the David Schuyler Urban Studies Fellowship.

Project Mentor: Professor Alison Kibler, Department of American Studies

In the Plass lab, we investigate how to change the composition of copper sulfide nanoparticles while keeping their overall size and shape. Through anion exchange, sulfur can be replaced with selenium or tellurium, while cation exchange allows copper to be replaced with cobalt. These reactions influence the crystal structure depending on the conditions and particle shape. Anion exchange usually preserves the hexagonal close-packed (hcp) structure, while cobalt exchange often shifts it to cubic close-packed (ccp), especially in nanorods. This summer, I studied how combining cobalt exchange with selenium or tellurium exchange affects the final material. Using PXRD, TEM, and SEM-EDS, I tracked changes in structure and composition. The results showed that outcomes depend on the chalcogen used, particle morphology, and reaction order, often producing incomplete or mixed phases. This project was supported by funding from F&M’s Summer Scholar Program and the National Science Foundation.

Project Mentor: Professor Kate Plass, Department of Chemistry

Over a week, I immersed myself within Arrowmont School of Crafts, and took a woodturning course with Aaron Hammer. As a Hawaiian-based woodturner, Aaron Hammer frequently uses indigenous Hawaiian woods for his craft, and is famed for his enormous koa wood bowls. My class focused on taking bowl blanks and transforming them into spindles, bottle stoppers, bowls, and candlesticks. I learned how to use an American Beauty lathe, as well as several woodturning tools, and became confident within beginning woodturning.   This project was supported by funding from F&M’s Committee on Grants Program and the Lutrey Immersive Study of Craft Endowment.

Project Mentor:  Jennifer Nell, Director of Student Success

For two senior independent study projects at Great Marsh and the Little Conestoga Creek in southeastern Pennsylvania, we are using two methods to assess surface and groundwater temperatures and the mixing of water between the two sources. First, we are using remote sensing imagery from a thermal sensor mounted on a UAV (drone) to acquire data during cold and warm periods when groundwater is likely to show a contrast with air temperature. Second, we are using continuous in situ measurements of temperature from Onset sensors installed in surface and groundwater. We also are monitoring air temperature at both study sites. Our ultimate goal is to determine how surface water responds to influxes of groundwater and changing air temperature both spatially and temporally. This information is significant to studies of water and aquatic habitat quality. This project was supported by funding from the F&M Hackman Summer Scholars Program, Geoscience Founders’ Society and the Robert and Dorothy Foose Endowment.

Project Mentor:  Dorothy Merritts, Professor of Earth and Environment

Bilingualism might cultivate perspective-taking, the cognitive ability to understand alternative perspectives, through enhanced cross-cultural understanding and creativity, empathy, and metalinguistic awareness (Yang, 2023), although not all studies have replicated this result. Previous studies have found advantages for bilingual perspective-taking (Xia & Haas, 2024); however, many criticise monolithic comparisons between bilinguals and monolinguals (Tiv et al., 2021). Thus, we investigated visuospatial/linguistic perspective-taking and metalinguistic awareness in Spanish-English bilingual adults in the US. Eighty-four participants completed three tests: non-literal language (Sundaray et al., 2018), description of spatial relationships of objects (Tversky & Herd, 2009), and morphosyntactic comprehension (Mahony, 1994). Analyses indicate English age of acquisition as a marginally significant predictor for visuospatial perspective-taking. Higher metalinguistic awareness was correlated with higher linguistic perspective-taking; however, metalinguistic awareness did not mediate the relationship between English proficiency and linguistic perspective-taking.  These results indicate how learning a second language influences cognition differently across the two constructs of perspective-taking.

This project was supported by funding from the F&M Hackman Summer Scholars Program.

Project Mentor:  Professor Jessica Cox, Department of Spanish and Linguistics

Lancaster City, with its large and diverse immigrant population, is a great opportunity for anthropological research about migration and belonging. Although, for this research to happen, there must be connection between the researcher and the immigrant. This summer, it became clear that there was something between me and the people that I tried to talk to. Twice, I was told that given the political climate, I would not be allowed to interact with the community. This is mistrust, which is not simply a lack of trust, but, like trust, a strategy to predict behavior and outcomes. For them, engagement with unknown citizens could easily lead to interaction with a state and people that are excessively hostile, and therefore must be avoided.  This project was supported by funding from the F&M Hackman Summer Scholars Program and the David Schuyler Urban Studies Fellowship.

Project Mentor:  Professor Christine Chalifoux, Department of American Studies and Africana Studies Program

We looked at knitted fabrics because stiff materials can stretch if knitted instead of woven. Our goal is to characterize the relationship between stress, strain, and gauge of knitted fabrics. A difficulty inherent to working with yarn samples is the reproducibility of our results. In order to reduce the uncertainty in our measurements, we studied and developed methods to control the sample fabrication and measurement steps. We created a mounting procedure for our samples. We measured the relaxation time of the sample in our apparatus. We found a method to keep the tension constant in the knitting machine. And we tried different bind on and cast off methods for making the samples. This project was supported by funding from the F&M Hackman Summer Scholars Program.

Project Mentor:  Professor Etienne Gagnon, Department of Physics and Astronomy

Galaxy distances are estimated by spectral redshifts, and galaxy motions distort their positions in the resulting redshift-space maps, offering insight into cosmic flows. Recognizing redshift-space distortions (RSDs) is easier when galaxy position data is sliced. We report a use case study using the RotationSlicing package (Praton et al., in development) to support RSD analyses and incorporate morphological classification in large spectroscopic surveys, streamlining data access and workflows.  We built a reproducible pipeline for filtering galaxy catalogs from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Data Release 1 (DR1) and developed a classification 

scheme to separate spiral and elliptical galaxies with quantified confidence, following Tempel et al. (2011) and Walmsley et al. (2022). We applied this workflow to Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data, producing sliced cluster visualizations with morphological distinctions. This work establishes a framework for future RSD studies by refining RotationSlicing and generating morphologically separated datasets for redshift-space analysis. This project was supported by funding from the NASA Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium.

Project Mentor:  Professor Elizabeth Praton, Department of Physics and Astronomy

Composting in small cities offers a vital, nature-based solution to improve soil health, reduce waste, and strengthen community resilience. In this study, I examined composting methods from five cities: Lancaster, Montpellier, Guimarães, Randwick, and Curitiba to understand and compare smaller-scale cities adopt composting, efficient practices, and how community-led systems shape environmental engagement. Utilizing questionnaires and interviews, findings reveal benefits between widespread participation and community engagement, the importance of online trainings, and adoptions of policy mandates. The research demonstrates that decentralized, community-driven systems can be more effective than big scale approaches due to local leadership and accountability. An insight into global composting organizations provide models that can be applied to Lancaster, while also increasing the discussions of sustainability and environmental politics. This project was supported by funding from F&M’s Committee on Grants Program and the Bolton Humanities and Social Sciences Student Exploration Endowment. 

Project Mentor:  Professor Eve Bratman, Department of Earth and Environment

This study examines the impact of floodplain-wetland restoration on surface water temperature at Big Spring Run (BSR) in southeastern Pennsylvania, USA. Legacy sediment removal (~20,000 metric tons) and aquatic ecosystem restoration were completed in 2011. Monitoring by the USGS (1993-2001, and 2008-present) and by F&M (2003-present) collected water temperature data before and after the restoration. Using USGS, NOAA, and NHDPlus databases, statistical models were run, comparing BSR to streams in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. These analyses revealed a statistically significant decrease in BSR’s spring-summer water temperatures (~ 3 °C per decade). In plotting the Mann-Kendall trend tests for BSR and the other streams, side-by-side, BSR’s spring-summer cooling trend is a distinct outlier compared to other streams, regardless of geomorphic similarities. This study bolsters the case for legacy sediment removal, and establishes a robust methodology for large-scale stream-temperature analyses. This project was supported by funding from the F&M Hackman Summer Scholars Program and the Geoscience Founders’ Society.

Project Mentors:  Professors Dorothy Merritts and Robert Walter, and Senior Teaching Professor Timothy Bechtel, Department of Earth and Environment.

Yellow fever has been endemic in America since before the nation was founded, returning every summer in epidemics of varying intensities across the country. These epidemics revealed the successes and failures of city and national governments as well as voluntary associations like the church. They also exposed tensions in class, gender and race relations. The Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878 in Memphis, Tennessee, is an ideal case study for a historian interrogating a city’s ability (or inability) to function during a time of crisis. Individuals in Memphis, failed by their government, stepped up to handle the plague: volunteer doctors, clergy and even a brothel-owner-turned-nurse. In three months, more than 17,500 people contracted the disease, and more than 5,000 died. Survivors left behind primary sources like newspapers, hand-written accounts, and letters, which highlight the ways the epidemic changed the social fabric of Memphis, the South, and the United States.  This project was supported by funding from the F&M Committee on Grants Program.

Project Mentor:  Professor Ted Pearson, Department of History

For this year’s leg of the Reckoning With Lancaster project, we, Taellor Cooper, ’27, and Tamas Peli, ’27, examined the meaning of abolition and enslavement in Lancaster, PA. Our group partnered with the Thaddeus Stevens & Lydia Hamilton Smith Center for History and Democracy, which allowed us to approach these themes through two distinct avenues. Our first project investigated the origin of a local volunteer fire company, the Shiffler Fire & Hose Company No. 7. Through our research, we discovered that the fire company was a little-known yet revealing dimension of Thaddeus Stevens’s public persona in Lancaster. Our second project focused on the media representations of the two, analyzing how the term “abolitionist” shaped the discourse and perceptions of both figures in relation to the societal values and conventions of each century. In our research on both topics, we used primary documents of the Shiffler Company, newspapers, letters, articles, images, and more. This project was supported by funding from the Mellon Humanities for All Times: Reckoning with Lancaster Grant. 

Project Mentors:  Professor Peter Jaros, Department of English and Professor Cristina Perez, Department of American Studies

Every historical truth has been integrated into a weaving of relationships, lives, and tales that influence how we perceive the past. This report aims to document the experiences of enslaved individuals and those who enslaved them with connections to Franklin College from its founding in 1787. We hope to offer a more human viewpoint on a trying time in the college's and the nation's history by exploring these people's identities. As a vital component of an ongoing effort to confront the past, together with Historic Rock Ford's Witness Stones Project which aims to memorialize people who have been underrepresented in history. With the information we gathered will be used to create stones to commemorate their lives. More than just the history of the school, the connection between slavery and Franklin College tells the narrative of actual individuals whose lives were characterized by hardship, tenacity, and complex interpersonal interactions. This project was supported by funding from the Mellon Humanities for All Times: Reckoning with Lancaster Grant. 

Project Mentors:  Professor Peter Jaros, Department of English and Professor Cristina Perez, Department of American Studies

We evaluated soil properties along a ~ 3-mile reach of the Little Conestoga Creek, Lancaster, PA. Our goal was to assess soil carbon dynamics in surface soils of pre- and post-restoration floodplain soils. Permanganate oxidizable carbon (POXC) varied by site and restoration status, with higher values observed in some post-restoration sites. Post-restoration sites also had a higher range of POXC compared to pre-restoration sites. POXC was positively correlated (r = 0.83) with loss on ignition, indicating a link between chemically labile and bulk soil organic matter in these floodplain soils. Soil pH analysis revealed little difference between pre- and post-restoration sites overall, but within pre-restoration sites pH tended to increase systematically across the floodplain with higher pH at locations near the active channel. This pattern was less evident in post-restoration sites. These results highlight how restoration influences labile soil carbon pools.  This project was supported by funding from the F&M Hackman Summer Scholars Program, the RK Mellon Foundation and the Steinman Foundation.

Project Mentor:  Professor Christopher Williams, Department of Earth and Environment

Midwifery played a quintessential role in the public’s health, particularly for women, in Mexico. Women in rural areas often sought out midwives to deliver their births and care for them. However, clinical archives from the Hospital Civil of Guadalajara show that the rise of formal medicine in Mexico in the 19th and 20th centuries overshadowed midwives’ role in maintaining maternal health. Nonetheless, based on interviews with former midwives and judicial archives, we argue that 1) women sought out midwives to deliver their births even when medical centers became accessible in rural locations because they understood the living experience of low-income women seeking medical care better than formally educated doctors, and 2) midwives served as social and cultural anchors for their surrounding community, especially due to their personalized care towards women. This project was supported by funding from the F&M Hackman Summer Scholars Program.

Project Mentor:  Professor Laura Shelton, Department of History

With a sample of 952 U.S. gamers (43.7% women), we tested whether video game use patterns and emotion regulation mediated gender differences in Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD), using structural equation modeling to identify underlying mechanisms of addiction vulnerability. We found that men spent more time playing a greater number of video games than their female counterparts. In addition, our research found that the pathway to IGD was different in men and women. Gamers who were men engaged in more competitive genres (e.g., MOBA, MMORPG, PvP shooter) which in turn were associated with an increased prevalence of IGD symptoms. On the other hand, women exhibited a greater reliance on avoidance coping and difficulties with emotional regulation. While women typically engaged in less time gaming, their emotional dysregulation made them similarly vulnerable to IGD. This project was supported by funding from the F&M Hackman Summer Scholars Program. 

Project Mentor:  Professor El-Lim Kim, Department of Psychology

This summer I conducted anthropological research with Professor Christine Chalifoux and my colleague Kaan Kartal on immigrant and refugee communities in Lancaster, which is “America’s refugee capital.” We investigated how refugees and migrants build a sense of community through shared meals, kinship bonds, and religious practices. We trained in qualitative data collection and conducted fieldwork at local eateries and places of worship. We attempted to conduct interviews but encountered ethical and practical challenges, as many community members declined due to concerns about safety in the current political climate. These refusals altered our research and highlighted the complexity of trust-building in ethnography. This research taught me to be more observant and to apply critical thinking in the field. My interactions with diverse individuals strengthened my interpersonal skills, and I gained insights into the lives of immigrants and refugees in Lancaster as well as a deeper understanding of how their communities function. This project was supported by funding from the F&M Hackman Summer Scholars Program and the David Schuyler Urban Studies Fellowship.

Project Mentor:  Professor Christine Chalifoux, Department of American Studies and Africana Studies Program

Attention has been given to goal recognition to improve assistance and create natural Human Robot Interaction (HRI). Wilson et al. (2025) constructed the Theory of Mind of Children Assembling Tangrams (ToMCAT) benchmark to assess Artificial Intelligence’s (AI) recognition of children’s puzzle goals. Building upon this dataset, we studied human performance as an additional baseline for AI evaluation. Additionally, this research helps assess the difficulty of the task presented by the ToMCAT benchmark. An online study was carried out with adult participants from Prolifics to measure their ability to recognize children’s intended puzzles based on unfinished images. Preliminary results from approximately 350 participants revealed positive correlation between accuracy and the number of correct piece alignments. This result suggests high expectations for AI counterparts. Ongoing work is utilizing the dataset on various tools, AI models (i.e, Claude). This study contributes to the development of collaborations between humans and robots.  This project was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation.

Project Mentor:  Professor Willie Wilson, Department of Computer Science

The [(cymene)RuCl(dppm)]+ complex has been studied in catalytic and biomedical applications. In recent studies, our group has found that half-sandwich Ru complexes of this type are converted to (CH3CN)3RuCl(PArX3) species during electrochemical oxidation in coordinating solvent (CH3CN), as the η6-cymene ligand is replaced by solvent molecules 3. This summer, we studied the formation of (PhCN)3RuCl(dppm) complexes, which appear to adopt dimeric forms in non-coordinating solvents (Acetone, DCM), while remaining as monomers in coordinating solvents (EtCN), which also readily exchange bound benzonitrile to generate (EtCN)(PhCN)2RuCl(dppm). On the basis of these results, we have been able to further outline the EC mechanism involved in the electrochemical oxidation of [(cymene)RuCl(dppm)]+. The syntheses of these Ru(dppm) complexes and their electrochemical profiles will be presented.   This project was supported by funding from the F&M Hackman Summer Scholars Program.

Project Mentor:  Professor Davide Lionetti, Department of Chemistry

Obsidian geochemistry is  a useful window into the volcanic eruption from which it formed. When analyzed for its major and trace elemental concentrations, it is possible to create a “chemical fingerprint” for each unique volcanic eruption. A 2014 Keck Research project looked at samples from a variety of locations surrounding Mt. Taylor and Mule Creek regions of New Mexico using portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF). Building upon this foundation, our summer research at Franklin & Marshall College focused on preparing thick sections from raw obsidian samples and obtaining mineral chemical compositions via scanning electron microscope (SEM) coupled with energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), to: (a) test the validity of pXRF data, and (b) document the geochemical evolution of these obsidians for the first time. Our work is providing new insights into the origins  of volcanic activity in New Mexico. This project was supported by funding from the F&M Hackman Summer Scholars Program. 

Project Mentor:  Professor James Jolles, Department of Earth and Environment

During our summer research, we assisted in sampling organic-rich sediment from the faces of two trenches excavated with a backhoe along the floodplain adjacent to White Clay Creek in southeastern Pennsylvania. About 300 years ago, the site was altered due to the construction of a milldam for water power, resulting in the burial of the original wetland in more than a meter of mud. Sub-samples from six depth intervals of one trench yielded radiocarbon ages of ~2500 to 500 yrs BP. We extracted more than one hundred macrofossils, mostly seeds, by wet sieving to obtain material ~0.5 and 1.0 mm in size. All seeds were photographed at high magnification with a digital camera mounted on a microscope. Working with a wetland expert, we have begun identifying fossil seeds, with many identified as obligate wetland environment sedges. Our ultimate goal is to reconstruct the paleoenvironment during the period of deposition. This project was supported by funding from the F&M Hackman Summer Scholars Program and the Geoscience Founders’ Society.

Project Mentors:  Professor Dorothy Merritts and Senior Teaching Professor Timothy Bechtel, Department of Earth and Environment